Star Crossed
by Unique
Summary: Sometimes fate is inevitable. Other times, something as simple as an Arkan leisure crawler taking a detour can change everything. Set during an alternate version of Cyberwoman.


Note: Small portions of the dialogue were taken from the Torchwood episode "Cyberwoman" and Doctor Who episodes "Doomsday" and "Rise of the Cybermen."

Ianto stared down at the ball in his hands, wondering why he had wasted his time feeling guilty. These people only saw him when they wanted something. Despite their holier-than-thou attitude towards Hartman and her ilk, they were still Torchwood with the same attitudes and hubris. Their little basketball game was really a blessing in disguise. The hub was empty without needing any of his pre-arranged distractions and he was reassured that Torchwood would deserve any fallout that arose from his actions- for he could not quite bring himself to feel hope that his mad plan might actually work.

He rushed to finish his final preparations.

With barely concealed anxiousness, he courteously ushered his last hope into Torchwood's lower levels, breaking every secrecy oath he had ever sworn in the process. Doctor Tanizaki was different than he had imagined; colder, and entirely too eager to get his hands on cyber technology. The way the doctor's hands touched Lisa as they talked about her circumstances made his skin crawl. It was all he could do to hold his tongue. Ianto was glad that the man would not be leaving the base with his memory in tact.

When Lisa woke up, in pain as she always was, he pushed aside his concerns and focused on her. When she was awake and speaking and so very, very human; it was easy to forget the metal encasing her broken body and the monster that lurked within the cyber programming. Looking into her soft, brown eyes, he was willing to give up the world just to have her whole.

"You always keep your promises," she said, so innocently as though he wasn't breaking a thousand promises at that very moment. He didn't even have that great of a record regarding the promises that he had made just to her. He promised her happiness and ended up with hell. He promised that she would be safe and the Cybermen stole her. He promised that she would be okay and here she was trapped as half a Cyberman. He promised to stop the pain but it just grew stronger. He promised to be honest and lied to her every day. Some days, he couldn't even manage to keep his promise to love her forever. He was just a well of broken promises, hoping that a stranger would keep him from shattering his last one, while she watched him so trustingly.

It hurt; lifting the weight of her mechanical body to transport it upstairs where Tanizaki would have more room to work, but that was his burden to bear. It was his due for emerging from Canary Wharf unscathed. He could bear anything if it would help Lisa. Without her, he was nothing.

So, of course, the first thing Tanizaki wanted him to do was to risk everything.

"This first stage should enable her to breathe without the respirator," said Tanizaki, as he poked and prodded Lisa, giving her injections. He recorded everything in his computer. "Once her body functions without support, I can judge what work is needed."

"What if she's not ready to breathe on her own?" he asked, remembering the horrible blue shade that Lisa had turned during her transport into the hub. Her respirator had malfunctioned and he had been terrified that too much time had passed and she would never take another breath.

"You must be prepared for her not to survive."

Ianto stared at the man who had clearly lost his mind. He had not come all of this way and done all of these horrible things just to prepare to fail here at the end when he was as close to success as he would ever be. Lisa dying was not an option…except, of course, it was. Did he not have half a dozen fail-safes in place to destroy the hub if the Cyberman programming ever won?

He let the man do his work. This was the reason he had brought the doctor halfway around the world; it would work.

He held her hand while Tanizaki stopped the respirator. Every breath that Lisa struggled to take felt like a vice wrapped around his chest. His heartbeat faltered in time with hers. The seconds stretched into hours as his anger and desperation grew and then suddenly, Lisa's eyes flew open and she breathed. Ianto had never seen such a beautiful sight; he felt like crying.

"You're alive," cried Ianto. He kissed her, trying to express the torrent of emotions coursing through him.

"This is just the start," said Tanizaki, and for the first time since the beginning, Ianto honestly felt real hope.

His phone beeped as the alarm he set earlier was activated. He knew from timing previous team outings exactly how long it usually took everyone to go out for drinks. According to his phone, his window of opportunity was almost closed. Fortunately, he had planned ahead. He pulled up the CCTV from the bar that they usually frequented watching as the footage showed them walking out of the door.

"I need to go stall them," he said. "Stay here."

Lisa caught his hand as he moved passed her. She gave it a quick squeeze.

"I love you," she said.

"I love you, too."

He looked behind him as he raced up the stairs to see Tanizaki attaching leads from Lisa to his computer. He slid into his computer seat, typing in the codes he needed to remote access a pair of cages he had hidden within the back alleys of a nearby shopping centre. The weevils inside the cages were dosed with Dextromethorphan- which induces a murderous rage in weevils, as they had discovered last month when a weevil accidentally ingested a bottle of linctus during a rampage at a Boots.

"Jack," he said, using the communications system to contact the team. "A report just came in: we have two weevils on the loose in a populated area."

"We're on our way."

"I'll have the car waiting for you on the Plass. I have already forwarded all of the tracking information to the SUV's computers."

"Good man," said Jack. Ianto could hear him talking in the background before he deactivated his earpiece. "All right, people, you heard the man."

A rhythmic thumping noise interrupted his thoughts. Ianto raced down the stairs, stopping abruptly at the sight of Lisa's body jerking on the examination table.

"What happened?"

"She's having a seizure." Tanizaki bent over his computer typing rapidly.

Torn, Ianto glanced at Lisa and then up towards exit.

"Don't let her die," he shouted.

He flew back up the stairs. He quickly typed in the last code that would set the raging weevils free and then he raced out of the door, heading for the garage. He had prepared the vehicle earlier that afternoon before he had realized that the team made plans so it took mere minutes before he was waiting beside the SUV on the surface. He could see the others hurrying across the open space still laughing, probably at one of Jack's ridiculous stories. Ianto hoped that none of his trepidation showed on his face.

The team brushed passed him, climbing into the vehicle.

"Is everything okay?" asked Jack, watching him stand awkwardly out of the way.

Ianto froze. He nodded quickly.

"Just fine, sir."

Jack gave him a brilliant smile.

"Don't wait up," he said, swinging into the passenger seat.

Ianto forced himself to walk casually back to the Tourist Offices. He paused briefly, ensuring that the SUV was out of sight, before re-entering the hub as rapidly as he could.

Silence greeted him.

"Dr. Tanizaki?"

Ianto moved cautiously down the stairs. He could see something on the floor in the doorway, where he had left Tanizaki and Lisa. He hurried to the bottom.

"Oh, no, what happened?"

He kneeled by the crumpled body. Turning it over, it was obvious that the doctor was dead. He spun around at the heavy, metal thump of boots coming from behind him. Lisa was standing there, staring at him with dead eyes.

"He was incompatible. He was deleted."

"Lisa, what did you do? How could you?" He stared at the empty face of his love in horror.

"You are inferior. Do you surrender for upgrading?"

He flashed back to the masses of Cybermen that had marched through Torchwood Tower looking for victims to upgrade. It was terrifyingly easy to imagine a new batch all wearing Lisa's face.

"Lisa, fight it. Don't let them win. I love you."

"Emotion destroys you. We will remove love. You will be like us."

"Please!" He fell to his knees, begging, sobbing. "Lisa!"

"The army will be rebuilt from here. This building is suitable."

He could deny the truth no longer. Tanizaki had done something and the programming had won. His Lisa was gone and there was nothing he hated more than a Cyberman, even if it did wear Lisa's face. Ianto could not allow this monster to escape and make good on its plans; he would not be responsible for destroying the world.

"You will be upgraded. Do you surrender?"

"I'll surrender," he said softly. "I just want to do one last thing."

He pulled a necklace out of his pocket.

"Please, wear this," he said, giving the pendant a discreet twist. He dropped it over her head.

The thing that looked like Lisa lifted up the necklace and looked at it.

"What is this?"

"A present," he said.

He wrapped his arms around the monster, gently forcing its arms and the necklace in its hand back down to its chest. Four seconds later, the pendant beeped and the Cyberman collapsed motionless to the ground. Ianto sighed in relief; he hadn't been certain his plan would work. The necklace had been a device invented by Torchwood One that created tiny, extremely localized electromagnetic pulse with a radius about the width of the invisible lift.

Leaving the Cyberman on the floor, he went to his desk and removed his Torchwood-issued handgun. He gently manoeuvred the body until it was flat and then he kissed Lisa's forehead. His hands shook as he pressed his gun against the centre of her flesh; he fired once to be absolutely certain that the monster was dead. Distantly, in the back of his head, a small voice was screaming.

He washed his hands in the sink. He kept expecting the water to run red with blood but it was clear. Moving over to a computer, he checked on the status of the team. Only one of the weevils had been caught and they were all occupied with chasing the last one so he still had plenty of time to dispose of…of…everything.

Tanizaki's body went first. It was easy to toss him into the incinerator like yesterday's garbage. He had destroyed everything and allowed the Cyberman to kill Lisa. He was to blame for this whole disaster.

A couple of quick computer viruses ensured that no one would ever know Tanizaki had ever been there.

Ianto ran a bowl of warm water and took a cloth down the where Lisa's body lay. He gently washed her, removing the blood and dirt. Where he could, he pulled away the metal that had been embedded into her flesh. He wanted her to look as human as possible. He spread a sheet across the exam table. Tears blinded him; as he picked her up gently and laid her down to wait. There was so much he should have said to her but the words caught in his throat, choking him.

He carefully gathered all of the equipment that Tanizaki had been using. They filled his arms and dragged the floor as he carried it all downstairs to join its owner in the incinerator. The weapons room where he had hidden Lisa for all of these weeks was next. He could barely force himself to enter the room, but he meticulously destroyed every single piece of equipment. Piece by piece, he fed the once fearsome conversion unit into the flames.

Every day he had wished that he could do this; but not like this, not when the cost was Lisa.

The flowers were the hardest to burn. He remembered how Lisa's eyes had brightened when she had seen them. She had smiled the whole day even when the pain was at its worst.

When everything had been destroyed, he returned upstairs. He cuddled Lisa's body to his chest, holding her close as he carefully carried her down the familiar path to the incinerator. In his time here with Torchwood Three, he had burned dozens of bodies, but he had never imagined destroying this one.

He placed her gently on the conveyor belt, wrapping the sheet around her shoulders. He pulled her arms forward until they were resting on her stomach. He folded her fingers around the picture frame that he had kept in her room. He looked at it one last time: his head was in her lap and they were both smiling and happy. He leaned forward, brushing his lips across her cold lips.

"Goodbye, my love."

He pressed the button to activate the incinerator. Lisa began to move slowly into the flames. The heavy metal door slid shut and Ianto collapsed to the ground. She was gone. There was nothing left of Lisa.

Tears and snot choked him. He began to rock back and forth sobbing. Everything inside him twisted and raged and he found himself screaming, clutching at his head. He had never experienced so much pain. He had not even known that humans could hurt like this.

Eventually, he calmed. His throat felt raw; the rest of him felt tattered and numb. Everything he had ever loved, everything he had ever been was ashes behind that metal door. He wanted to climb in after her and end it all.

He stared at the incinerator trying to think of a reason why he shouldn't. It would hurt, but he would deserve it. He wasn't really rational right now, and was probably in shock, but he still felt that the idea held merit. What did he have to live for? A job that he was vastly over qualified for? A flat that he hated? Co-workers that ignored him? He had nothing. He was nothing. There was absolutely nothing to stop him from joining Lisa.

He almost did it right then, but he realized that he had one thing left to do; he needed to erase the CCTV from tonight. There was a small part of him – the part of him that had burned with shame through all of this- that did not want the team to know what he had done and how he had betrayed them.

Ianto calmly went back upstairs. He absentmindedly cleaned up as he moved through the hub making sure that all the evidence had been cleared away. He even climbed up to bid Myfanwy a final farewell, before he sat down at Tosh's computer, because it had the easiest access, and erased everything that had happened since the basketball game that afternoon. If only he could erase the events from reality that easily.

Ianto looked around the empty hub and wished he could see more than just his failures in the view. In a different time, in a different life; perhaps he could have been happy here. In a different time, in a different life; he would never have been here at all. He thought for a moment about leaving a note, but, really, he had nothing to say.

With nothing left to do, he returned to the cold, harsh lower levels. He stood before the incinerator for a long moment, waiting for last minute jitters or something to change his mind, but there was nothing. He was nothing. He straightened his suit for one last time.

He lay down on the cold metal slab and activated the conveyor belt. His last thought- thought dimly through screaming agony- was that, at last, his surroundings matched the burning hell that he had been living through since Canary Wharf.

The heavy metal door slid shut and that was the end of Ianto Jones.

#

It was the lack of coffee that first alerted the team to Ianto's absence.

"Where's the tea boy?" demanded Owen, coming out of the kitchen area empty-handed.

"He's probably just in the archives again," said Gwen with a shrug. She was trying to restore her desk to some semblance of order so that she could go home.

"Ianto," drawled Jack, but there was no response over his communicator. "That's strange."

"Great." Owen slammed his things onto his desk. "So glad that someone got to go home on time."

"But his car is still here," said Tosh, sounding concerned. Her fingers flew across her keyboard in a series of rhythmic clacking. "We just parked beside it."

"Maybe he walked home or stepped out to buy us something to eat. He did mention pizza earlier."

"Jack." Tosh's voice shook and she was deathly pale as she stared across the room at him. "You need to see this."

They gathered around her monitor. The footage played back silently showing Ianto enter the room with the incinerator. The camera gave a clear view of his blank, impassive face. He calmly brushed off his suit and then stretched himself out on the conveyor belt. They watched as he disappeared into the incinerator. Gwen gagged and turned away. No one else said anything. Screens opened and closed rapidly on Tosh's computer.

"I can't access any CCTV footage from the time we left this afternoon until…until… What happened while we were gone? Why would Ianto do that?"

"Easy," said Owen around a mouthful of food. "Survivor's guilt." He pointed half of a stale donut at Jack. "I told him before he hired him that he was a nut job."

"That's enough," said Jack, harshly. He ran his hands over his face. "Look, just gather your things and go home. We'll deal with this tomorrow."

Gwen stared at all of them silently. Not for the first time, she wondered how they could all have become so callous, but she did not say anything this time. A second suicide in about a month was more than a little unnerving but, to be honest, she had never really liked Ianto: his subservient position within the team reminded her too much of her role with the police and she hated being reminded that she had once been so invisible. So Gwen did what Jack said—she went home and proceeded to pretend that Ianto had never existed. It was easier that way.

Owen, of course, did not care. Why should he care about someone who had not cared about themselves?

Jack drank half of a bottle of scotch that night. He toasted the loss of a beautiful man who had seemed so promising. More than any of the other team members, he understood that none of them had ever really known Ianto Jones, but he had come to them damaged. One more death to lay at Yvonne Hartman's feet.

It was Tosh who cried herself to sleep. She spent her free time trying to recover the lost hours of video hoping to find some answers, trying to assuage her guilt. She had thought that they were friends.

Gradually, Torchwood returned to the way things had been before Ianto.

Life went on.

And approximately eight months and one not-year later, Jack found himself inside one of UNIT's London offices as they waited on the fallout from the Valiant and the assassination.

"I just want to check up on my team," said Jack, borrowing one of the UNIT computers. He quickly accessed the camera system within the Hub. He felt at peace at the sight of them going about their normal lives, healthy and whole. Then he caught sight of a sparkle when Gwen moved her hand. He manipulated the footage, zooming in on the ring on her finger.

"Are you sure that you don't want to come with me?" offered the Doctor for the third time.

This time Jack paused to really consider the idea. He thought again about that ring.

"You know," he said. "I think I will."


End file.
